Category Archives: events

ELI09: Alternate Reality Games

Over the span of a few short days, have gone from reading a “7 things” brief about ARGs (alternate reality games) which mentioned in rather detached terms that they “offer engaging content” and “new opportunities for collaborative learning” …

… to attending a pre-conference workshop that explored elements of play ….

… to becoming a participant as an ARG unfolds here at the conference.

It turns out this mystery fellow Rufus has a blog …

and a website, and a Twitter account … and there on the table at the back of the room is another (non-web-based) artifact that is obviously also related in some way …

Conference participants are finding their own way through all of this, some more actively engaged, some less so, and a wiki has emerged from among a number of options as a place to compile what has been found to date.

Also found this blog post, a reference from the workshop wiki, which gets at some interesting elements re: philosophy.

In the case of Rufus, no one told us what to do, we just dove in. It’s an interesting mix of lots of pre-planning (the team promised to post the coordination docs by week’s end) combined with then opening it up and letting it take on a life of its own.

There’s a puzzle, which creates an itch, which leads you down the first of many rabbit holes … and the clues and content that people are collecting and sharing is bubbling up all over the place, as yet another layer added to this very interesting event.

Definitely not the same as just reading about it.

ELI09: twitter as back channel

* * WARNING * * … this is a live-blogged post in need of some serious tinkering, when I have a chance … links are not embedding (the popup is blank), and the pictures aren’t uploading quite right … but I’ll go ahead and publish it for now, and fix those things later …

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Sitting here at the ELI09 conference in Constance Steinkuhler’s presentation on virtual worlds — she’s looking at the discourse of adolescent boys while playing online games … (but that’s a separate post … )

What was really striking was this progression of events …

1) Bob Cole and I are sitting here in the session, in Orlando, Florida.

2) We’ve both got the MIIS yammer community open, and Bob posts a link to the live video stream of the talk.

3) Anne Marie Steiger picks it up and writes back a thanks (she’s in Monterey, but watching the same plenary session along with us).

4) I replied with the link to the #ELI09 hashtag … which is a way to collect posts of all kinds … and in particular, a way to follow the live back channel of people sitting both in this room and elsewhere, as they watch the presentation.

Here’s the link I sent to Anne Marie, but the moments of actual commentary on the plenary will be long gone. So I’m attaching some images by way of visual documentation of this back channel phenomenon.

I think it’s important for a couple of reasons.

1) It turns what is traditionally a one-way presentation into a far more interactive experience. I’m listening to the presenter, and simultaneously watching a steady stream of other people’s reactions, thoughts, questions, etc, and am free to jump in myself at any time.

2) The way that it bridges not just the individuals here, but also beyond this particular room, and pulls in anyone with a good web connection. A sense of “presence” is something that is talked about as a defining characteristic of virtual worlds and how they differ from something like Elluminate or Skype audio or video chats — where does this fit along that continuum? Does the co-presence of ideas count for more than seeing a sea of faces? 🙂

At MIIS, what implications does this phenomenon of the back channel have when doing hybrid or online courses? For collaborating with colleagues and peers who are geographically distant? (DPMI plus, IPSS, CLS hybrid, etc …)

Reminds me of some folks who researched the ways in which their students utilized various back channels during an online course: what participants used, why and how they used it.

ELI09 – Participation and Collaboration: Social Learning

Heading out to the ELI09 conference tomorrow. I’ve been accessing resources from their website for quite some time now, and recommend the following:

7 things you should know about … (series): a great introduction to emerging technologies and their potential impact on teaching & learning (very succinct, 2-page format)

Horizon Report 2009 (pdf): co-published with the New Media Consortium, the Horizon Project Wiki is a deep well of information on emerging technologies for learning. Venture into this wiki *not* … if you were planning to use the next two hours for some other critical task!

I recently ran across official mission statements for both organizations:

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) helps institutions advance learning through IT innovation. ELI is a community that works together to stay on the leading edge of teaching and learning with technology through a focus on learners, learning principles and practices, and learning technologies.

EDUCAUSE (the parent organization) looks more broadly at higher education, learning and technology.

I like the focus on learning, and am looking forward to learning a lot!